Table Mountain may seem like a benign playground for the hundreds of city dwellers who live in her shadow, but don’t be fooled - she claims more victims in a month than shark attacks have in four long years.

Recent deadly attacks by Great White sharks in the waters off the Cape coast caused unprecedented panic and stirred uninformed fishermen and other inhabitants of the city into the hell bent capturing and destroying of as many of these beautiful creatures as they could lay their hands on.

The shark attacks in 2003/04 were particularly spine chilling: an elderly woman was attacked relatively close to the beach in Fish Hoek, a young boy lost his leg in the surf of Muizenberg, and a surfer was decimated by an enormous specimen whilst surfing at Noordhoek . These popular beaches are all packed with holiday makers and local residents during the summer.

Reliable data from the Natal sharks board indicates that there is no real increase in the incidence of shark attacks along the South African coastline, as only 4 fatalities occurred between 2004 and 2007.

What is shocking, however, is that statistics collated on the South African Mountain Accidents database (SAMA) tell a very different story about our so-called ‘benevolent’ mountain. From the beginning of 2007 to the present there have been 8 deaths on Table mountain and 50% (or 4) of these deaths occurred in a single month – that of August 2008.

So when you consider the millions of people who enjoy our beaches and adjoining surf virtually every single day of the summer, sharks are not as big a danger as they are made out to be. However, if danger warnings are the order of the day, be cautioned about that mountain – 21 people lost their lives to its rocky jaws between 2004 and 2007.